Mikel Arteta admits a few Arsenal players have missed training as injury woes investigated amid Gabriel update

Mikel Arteta has revealed that some of his Arsenal players were not able to train on Thursday as he also delievered a cryptic update on the fitness of defender Gabriel Magalhães ahead of Saturday evening’s clash with West Ham United.

The Gunners host the Irons at the Emirates Stadium in the Saturday evening kick off at 5.30pm. A win would put them within six points of Liverpool who host an out-of-sorts Manchester City at Anfield on Sunday. However, Arsenal might have to face the Hammers with a few players missing as Arteta said on Friday, via the official club website: “Not a lot because we have another training session, we have to see how the boys are today. A few weren’t able to train yesterday but hopefully today so we have to wait and see.”

Gabriel is an injury concern for Arsenal after he scored in Tuesday’s 5-1 win at Sporting CP but was forced off early. Asked for an update, Arteta responded: “Wait and see. I can’t [give you an update], not because I don’t want to.”

The Gunners have dealt with a number of injury concerns this season with Martin Odegaard missing a large chunk of the season after picking up an ankle injury on international duty. Declan Rice missed a handful of games with a broken toe while summer signing Riccardo Calafiori has recently returned to the squad after he suffered a knee injury during a Champions League match against Shakhtar Donetsk back in October.

Asked if he had investigated Arsenal’s injury problems this season, Arteta admitted that the club had ‘researched’ the issues but given the nature of the injuries has not found much cause for concern.

He added: “There was a big difference between the end of last season and the previous one - availability. You can tell that. We do research, not only when we have injuries but when we don’t as well because people tend to look deeper at things when there’s a problem, not when everything is going very good. Dig in there because maybe you are doing things that are actually impacting what is happening. We’ve done a lot. Not changing much, it’s true that certain players come from a position where they’ve played over 130 games in two seasons, but a lot of things have been impacts on joints, which are not related to muscle injuries which you can treat more. It’s more difficult to control, I think.”